


Ramble On

by callunavulgari



Series: Heather's Favorites [34]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dreams, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e20 Rupture, Flashpoint - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6805378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you going to sing at me too?”</p><p>“Do you want me to sing to you?” Thawne asks.</p><p>Barry glances at him, frowning unhappily. He’s wearing Wells’ face again, a familiar little half-smile playing around his lips. His suit is wet. It isn’t <i>the</i> suit — not the yellow one — just a regular one. Plain. Black. The fabric clings to his shoulders and his hair is dripping in his eyes. His feet are bare too, and somehow it feels wrong to see them, the fine slender bones gleaming wetly. Too intimate. Barry swallows and looks away, but even when he concentrates, it refuses to change. Figures, that even in a dream Thawne would cause him grief.</p><p>When Barry doesn’t reply, Thawne playfully hums a few bars of something vaguely familiar. Barry looks back at him, and when Thawne sees him looking, he smiles wider and gleefully stomps his way through a puddle. Sings, “If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do…”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ramble On

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Ramble On 漫步](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7857964) by [jls20011425](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jls20011425/pseuds/jls20011425)



> My take on what I want tomorrow's episode to be. Basically what I wanted time in a bottle to be, before weird fantastical settings got the best of me. There was supposed to be a coda tacked onto the end there, but uh, I forgot this existed for a week. So. Sequel? Maybe? Later? And here- have some reference images. [1](http://everystockphoto.s3.amazonaws.com/rain_1039289_o.jpg) [2](http://66.media.tumblr.com/48c0dc7548c178639f8bc02b2a3ffa27/tumblr_niq88cEMuR1qa53wno4_1280.jpg) [3](http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/lightning-in-the-suburbs-trevor-garner.jpg).
> 
> Beta'd by spaceoperetta, who is absolutely lovely about humoring me at two in the morning. So thanks for that!

Barry wakes up in his bed. At least, it looks like his bed. Smells like his bed. When he rolls over and buries his nose in the pillows, it’s the same as it always is. Cheap laundry detergent and the slightly more expensive brand of fabric softener that Joe had foisted off on him weeks ago. Sweat. The lingering smell of his body wash.

Normal.

His room is the same, just like he left it. There’s a container of pad thai sitting open on his desk that he’d forgotten in the rush. He should throw it away. It’s bound to be bad by now.

When his fingers nudge up against the sides of the container though, it’s still warm. The noodles are still steaming. It smells fresh. Barry blinks, and looks around the room again. Then he remembers.

Pain. Zoom. Rupture. A room full of murdered cops. Wells. The particle accelerator.

Dying?

He thinks he remembers dying. There was pain. Lots of pain, more than anything he’d ever felt before. He’d thought, _God, I’d do anything to make it stop_. And it had. He’d come apart, dissolved, and then expanded. Exploded? Then, nothing. Then, here.

He stares at the steaming day old Thai food in his hands, and gingerly sets it aside. He’s hungry. But he won’t eat.

None of this is normal.

.

His mother is making pancakes in the kitchen. She’s humming something softly under her breath, her red hair done up into rollers. He can’t remember if she ever did her hair like that when she was alive, but her hair seems brighter than he remembers it. Oversaturated. Was it ever that red?

For a moment, it seems horribly out of place. After all, he’s never once seen his mother in Joe West’s home. But when he blinks the scene rearranges itself. This house knows his mother. This house knows Barry too, even though it’s been years since he’s been here.

His mother’s hands are quick and sure as she mixes the batter. There’s an apron thrown on over her nightgown that proudly declares her to be the best mom ever. Barry remembers getting it for her. Dad had taken him out to buy her a birthday present, and he’d picked that one out. Because that way she’ll make more pancakes, he’d told his dad. His dad had laughed.

The stair creaks underfoot and Barry winces as his mom looks over her shoulder, craning her neck around to see him. Nothing strange happens. No horror movie effects to go along with the quiet stillness of the house. She just smiles at him, over bright, and says, sing-song and silly, “ _And if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last. When all are one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll..._ ”

She tap tap taps against the cabinets, and music swells in his head. He knows the tune as she sings it, remembers drives home from school in the backseat of the family’s Honda as she sang enthusiastically over the music. Tapping out drum solos on the steering wheel and craning her neck around until he sang with her.

He sings it with her now. “ _And she’s buying a stairway to heaven_.”

.

He opens the front door and finds the visitor’s room at Iron Heights. His dad sits there behind the glass as if nothing’s changed. As if the last year hasn’t even happened. His face is more familiar than his mom’s had been — the same tired lines on his face, old and grizzled; Barry has spent ten years watching those lines appear on his dad’s face. His dad looks run down, ragged, as if every day is a challenge to get through. He smiles at Barry anyway.

As Barry watches, his dad gestures to the phone, still smiling, and Barry bites down on his lip so hard that it stings. Can you bleed in a dream? Can you bleed when you’re dead?

He picks up the phone and it creaks at him, static in his ears, before his dad’s voice filters in. This part is less familiar, because his dad hasn’t had a reason to sing in years. His voice is sad as he sings, “ _When you comin' home, Dad. I don't know when, but we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then._ ”

.

Another door.

Joe smiles at him, tips his hat, and sings, “ _Son, can you play me a memory, I'm not really sure how it goes. But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete, when I wore a younger man's clothes_."

Iris looks at Barry over a grand piano, her fingers long and slender against the keys. She’s wearing a red dress, bright as his mom’s hair. It’s got a long slit up the thigh, and a neckline that dips and dips. The real Iris would never wear that dress, Barry thinks, and as he watches, the dress melts into one he’d seen her wear a week ago. This one is green, with a very modest neckline. No slit.

“ _Sing with me_ ,” she sings warmly, her eyes sad. “ _Just for today, maybe tomorrow the good lord’ll take you away_.”

Barry takes a step backwards when a tear trickles down her cheek, not looking at Joe, not looking at her, and nearly trips over Cisco. Barry turns to him, heart beating wildly. Cisco’s hair is tucked back in a ponytail. He’s wearing a purple suit. Caitlin stands behind him in a dress that matches.

They open their mouths and whisper, “ _Dream on_.”

Barry rushes for the door.

.

Outside, it’s raining. The air is heavy with humidity, heat pressing down on his back like something alive. Barry walks down the street, feet bare against the wet asphalt. Thunder rumbles threateningly in the distance. A bird sings, and a street over, another joins it. Everything is green and damp. It smells real. Would a dream smell real?

Halfway down the street, a second pair of feet join his. The person they belong to is silent, doggedly following him down the road. Barry doesn’t have to turn to know who his newest phantom is.

“Are you going to sing at me too?”

“Do you want me to sing to you?” Thawne asks.

Barry glances at him, frowning unhappily. He’s wearing Wells’ face again, a familiar little half-smile playing around his lips. His suit is wet. It isn’t _the_ suit — not the yellow one — just a regular one. Plain. Black. The fabric clings to his shoulders and his hair is dripping in his eyes. His feet are bare too, and somehow it feels wrong to see them, the fine slender bones gleaming wetly. Too intimate.

Barry swallows and looks away, but even when he concentrates, it refuses to change. Figures, that even in a dream Thawne would cause him grief.

When Barry doesn’t reply, Thawne playfully hums a few bars of something vaguely familiar.

Barry looks back at him, and when Thawne sees him looking, he smiles wider and gleefully stomps his way through a puddle. Sings, “ _If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do…_ ”

“Stop.”

Thawne stops, his mouth clicking shut.

Because this is a dream, Barry says, “My mom liked that song.”

“Good taste, your mother,” Thawne says. His face twists with something that’s half depreciation, half something else. Something unfathomable. It looks like regret. “Some days I’m sorry that I killed her.”

Rage surges through Barry. For the space of a heartbeat, he thinks about killing Thawne. Thinks about killing him the way he’d killed his mother. Of watching him bleed out all over the road, the red mixing with the rain.

The anger is quick to dissipate.

“Good,” is all he says. He keeps walking.

They’ve walked maybe a block before Thawne shifts next to him and says, “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Barry tells him with a shrug. He laughs. “Wherever my heart takes us?”

Thawne hums thoughtfully, fingers tapping against his chin. When Barry looks at him properly, he can’t help but notice things. There’s familiarity to this Thawne that is missing from the other Wells. Lines that he doesn’t have, gestures that he doesn’t make.

Barry winces and looks away. Thawne notices. “Something wrong with my face?”

He narrows his eyes. Bites back, “Not your face.”

Thawne turns, raising an eyebrow. The rain has darkened more of his suit now. He drips when he walks. “Yes. But it’s the face you know, so I think I’ll keep it for now.”

All at once, Barry feels tired. He wants to sit down. He doesn’t want to keep walking.

The landscape twists before his eyes, reworking itself. Barry doesn’t watch it reform. Instead he watches Thawne. Eobard Thawne, whose expression barely shifts as he tracks the changes to their setting with interest.

“I didn’t think you were the flowers type, Barry,” Thawne says, striding forward a few steps before twisting to look at him. Barry glances upwards, at the canopy of curving pink blossoms braided into a trellis above them. Then down, at the single wooden bench below the most vibrant of the flowers.

He smiles. He’s made them a shelter from the storm.

“Maybe you just didn’t know me as well as you thought you did,” Barry tells him, taking a seat at the bench. Thawne sits beside him, close enough that Barry can feel the heat of him, seeping in through their damp clothes.

Thawne clucks his tongue thoughtfully. “No, it’s not that. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t get the chance to know this part of you.”

Barry breathes out, careful to keep the sound of it steady and even. He swallows, throat working against the ball of emotion that’s made it’s home inside of it. Says, thickly, “Some days I miss you.”

Thawne looks at him. There’s something careful about him in this moment, something that was present when Barry thought that his name was Harrison Wells but never was after. After he became Eobard Thawne. Barry’s tried so hard to avoid thinking of this, of this obvious _regard_ that Thawne held for him. And now here it is again, etched into the lines of Thawne’s face.

_And now, somehow, I know what Joe and Henry feel when they look on you with pride. With lo-_

Barry clenches his jaw and shakes the memory free. He keeps moving.

“I can’t remember the last time that I thought about killing you,” Thawne tells him after a long moment. It sounds real. Honest. True. Do dreams sound real? He gives Barry a wry smile, shifting on the bench so one long leg is tucked beneath him. He sets his chin on his fist and looks at Barry.

Barry laughs, even though it’s not funny, and says, “Was it when you were trying to kill me?”

 _Right before I killed you_ , he doesn’t think.

Thawne shakes his head.

“No. I was angry then. I wasn’t thinking at all.” Thawne looks at him. “Most of the time, I was thinking about protecting you.”

“I thought you hated me.”

Thawne looks at his feet. They’re still bare, still wet, but they’re drying. In a small voice, he says, “So did I.”

Barry thinks about that. The storm is almost upon them. The thunder has gotten louder, and now he can see the lightning crackling across the sky. He can smell it — the storm in the air, ozone and electricity and damp. It reminds him of the man standing next to him. Maybe it always will.

“I loved you,” he confesses, wringing his hands between his legs. “I- I realized that I couldn’t go my whole life hating you, not when there was that piece of me that... I just couldn’t. So I forgave you.”

“For everything?”

Barry nods, jerkily. He doesn’t want to see Thawne’s face right now.

“For everything.”

He can feel Thawne’s whole body sigh next to him, slumping like it’s just been deflated. Barry can see him out of the corner of his eye as he scrubs a hand through his hair. “Just when I think that I’ve got you figured out. You’re full of surprises, Barry Allen.”

Barry tilts his head back, and thinks, very clearly, that he wants to feel the rain on his face. The blossoms above him part easily, curling back until there’s a perfect skylight above him. The rain hits his face in a shock of cold, like ice.

“The Speed Force does love you, doesn’t it?”

Thawne is watching him, his head tipped back to regard Barry properly. There’s rainwater clinging to his eyelashes, but he doesn’t blink them away. “What do you mean?”

“It’s never loved me the way it loves you,” Thawne continues, leaning in to pluck a fallen petal from Barry’s hair. He rubs it between his thumbs, expression one of dawning comprehension. He glances up at the hole in their little shelter- at the rain, the lightning. His eyes are wide. “You think that this is a _dream_.”

A chill begins to creep up Barry’s spine. “Well, yeah,” he says slowly. “You’re dead.”

Thawne chuckles, disbelieving. The sound is almost a scoff. “I’m not dead, Barry. I was _erased_. Do you know what happens when something like that happens to a speedster?”

Barry licks his lips. “Should I?”

Thawne’s face twists. “Well, no, I suppose not. I never taught you that, did I?” He leans in and in, until Barry can feel Thawne’s breath on his face. He laughs, reaching out and clasping Barry’s chin to drag him even closer, until they’re nose to nose. Up close, he smells real.

“They’re trying to call you home, Barry,” Thawne whispers, breath hot against Barry’s cheek.. “Can’t you hear them?”

Barry swallows. “Who?”

“Cisco. Iris. They’re trying to ground you, but you can’t even hear them.” Thawne sucks in a deep breath, closing his eyes in what seems to be pure, simple delight. “I can hear them. They want you to come home.”

Lightning crackles above them. Thunder booms. The wind howls. “I can’t hear anything.”

Thawne smiles, not the honest thing from before, but something with teeth. “You will,” he breathes. “ _Listen_.”

Barry closes his eyes. Feels Thawne’s touch -- the hand firmly clasping his jaw, how his thumb is pressed tight to the hinge. He listens to the storm around him, how it rages, the lightning and the rain. The green smell of the air -- bright ozone, dirt, growing things, and water. It all feels so real.

“Deeper, Barry,” Thawne urges. When Barry starts to slant his eyes open, Thawne hisses and covers them with his free hand. It’s rough with calluses. More real than this storm, more real than the dream people and their songs. More real than anything in this dream, he realizes.

“You’re actually real,” he whispers.

Thawne laughs. It isn’t mocking or hateful -- in fact, it sounds almost kind. Warm. Affectionate. “I am.”

“Why are you helping me?”

Thawne tuts, his thumb dragging against Barry’s lips. He doesn’t remove his palm from Barry’s eyes. “No more talk, Flash. Relax. Feel. Listen. I believe in you.”

Barry listens.

There’s the storm. There’s Thawne. And beyond that, there’s a thread -- something just out of reach. If he could only pull-

A laugh; simple delight. Lips drag against his temple -- unfamiliar, chapped. “That’s it, Barry. Reach.”

And there they are.

He can hear them now, calling over the sound of the storm.

Thawne’s hand shifts away from his eyes, and Barry lets them drift open lazily; half in, half out of the dream. Thawne is looking at him, so close, his eyes bright. There’s lightning in those eyes. Warmth to his touch.

Barry hates him. He loves him. He hates-

Thawne hums something off-key under his breath. It sounds like Led Zeppelin. He can hear it in his head -- the memory of it right next to singing in the car with his mom. It’s right there and he can’t-

“Hush,” Barry hears. “Stop thinking. Answer the call.”

Barry closes his eyes.

When he opens them, the storm is gone.

And so is Thawne.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs used:
> 
> Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin  
> Cat’s In the Cradle, Harry Chapin  
> Piano Man, Billy Joel  
> Dream On, Aerosmith  
> Time In a Bottle, Jim Croce  
> Ramble On, Led Zeppelin.


End file.
